Sweet Science

Gentleman Jim (1942) is an interesting exercise in making a fun movie with an incredibly charismatic, unlikable lead.

It stars Errol Flynn as Gentleman Jim Corbett, early heavyweight boxing champion. It starts in the late 1800s, in San Francisco. Everyone is headed for an illegal boxing match. Flynn and his buddy Jack Carson, poor bank clerks, see one of the bank's directors among the spectators and head over in hopes of kissing up. When the fight is raided, Flynn fast talks the cops into letting the director go. Later, when his daughter. Alexis Smith, comes by, giving him a chance to wangle his way into the Olympia Club, where the upper class are planning a legit boxing club to clean up image. And Flynn knows how to box - because...

At home with his Irish immigrant father (Alan Hale) and two brothers, Jim plays the gent, all formal good manners. His brothers tease him all the time, leading to brawls that all the neighbors come to watch, with the catch-phrase, "The Corbetts are at it again!"

So Flynn has wormed his way into society, having himself paged to keep up his image, then gets kicked out because Jack Carson acts like a drunken lout. But he works his way up through the fight game, until he defeats John L. Sullivan (Ward "Is" Bond). There's a touching scene where Bond meets with Flynn privately to tell him how much he respects him and Flynn butters him up, and it's all very sportsmanly and gentlemanlike.

But this is a boxing movie - you know, Wallace Beery in tights (I guess that's wrestling, but whatever). So how are the fight scenes? Remarkably good for it's era - I don't suppose it threatens Raging Bull (haven't seen), but it is pretty realistic and quite fast. So even if Flynn comes off as a stuck-up, kiss-up class traitor, at least he knows how to fight